Journalist missing in Veracruz for 3 months

Mexico City, April 22, 2013--The Committee
to Protect Journalists calls on Mexican authorities to fully investigate the
disappearance of journalist Sergio Landa Rosado in the state of Veracruz. Landa,
who covers the crime beat for the local daily Diario Cardel, has been missing since January, according to news
reports.

Landa disappeared while working in the city
of Cardel on January 23, according to Diario
Cardel. The newspaper reported his disappearance
two days later and his wife filed a report with authorities the following week,
but the case only came to the attention of the national media this month.

Journalists at Diario Cardel told CPJ that Landa reported on the murder of a taxi
driver early in December. The next day, they said, two SUVs and a car with men
carrying assault rifles came to the newspaper office and took the reporter
away. The police and a Navy unit gave pursuit and Landa somehow escaped, though
it's not clear exactly how, the reporters said. While he was being held, Landa's
kidnappers told him that he was going to be killed for writing the story about
the cab driver, according to the journalist's colleagues and his wife, Isabel.
A fellow reporter, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal, told
CPJ that the armed men told Landa the story was the kind that might elicit too
much attention. Another reporter in Cardel said that an organized crime group
has moved into the area and was kidnapping and extorting, but does not want its
actions covered in the press. The reporter said he thought the murdered cab
driver had probably not paid an extortion demand.

After escaping, Landa fled Cardel for a
distant city in Veracruz where he worked for a newspaper affiliated with Diario Cardel, his wife said. A few
weeks later he returned home but stayed in hiding in Cardel until the day of
his disappearance. That morning, he went to the Diario Cardel newsroom for the first time since he had been
abducted. A few hours later, he told another reporter he had to check on
something and he would be right back, the reporter said. He has not been seen
since.

"We are deeply concerned by the
disappearance of Sergio Landa Rosado and call on Mexican authorities to conduct
a thorough investigation to find him and bring the kidnappers to justice," said
CPJ's senior program coordinator for the Americas, Carlos Lauría, from New
York. "President Enrique Peña Nieto must show that he won't tolerate the
anti-press violence and intimidation that thrived under the previous
administration."

Journalists in the area told CPJ that
Landa's disappearance makes it clear to them that they cannot
cover the local activities of the crime group. They said they assume that
Landa was abducted again and had been killed.

Veracruz has become the most dangerous
state for journalists in Mexico, according to CPJ research. Last
week, the national Mexican magazine Procesoreported that it has
learned of a plot by officials in the government of Veracruz to harm
journalist Jorge Carrasco, who has reported extensively on the murder of the
magazine's correspondent in that state, Regina Martínez Pérez. At least eight journalists
have been murdered since
Gov. Javier Duarte took office in late 2010, and many more have fled--permanently
or temporarily--because of threats from organized crime as well as from state
government officials, according to CPJ research.

At least 12 other journalists have gone missing in
Mexico over the past decade, according to CPJ research.